Artist
by walkingaftermidnight
Summary: Bella and Jacob take on a fairly ambitious "art project" together. Written for LJ comm Sort of Beautiful's fic prompt: Crimson. Bella/Jacob. Fluff.


**This was written for the livejournal community _Sort Of Beautiful_'s August fic prompt.*Checks calendar* What do you mean it isn't August anymore? Well, fancy that… **

**The truth is I had almost abandoned this one, having come back to it several times after letting it sit for weeks, but in the end I decided to follow through with it after all. I've never attempted full-on stand-alone fluff/happiness before, so you'll have to let me know if it's even remotely successful. Otherwise I'll just go back to hanging out in my angsty little corner. ;) **

**Hope you enjoy.**

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****ARTIST**

"He's out back," Billy shouts through the screen of the front door, watching her feet pound dust clouds out of the sun-baked dirt as she runs up the path towards the house. His fingertips graze the mesh, guiding it open as far as his extended arm can manage.

Bella takes the four wooden steps as two, navigates past the one shaky floorboard and inserts her face into the gap between the door and the house.

"Sorry?" she asks after swallowing several tiny gasps of air. Her expression is warm and upbeat but free of any _real_ curiosity.

She hasn't even said 'hello', hasn't even stated her agenda, but Billy knows damn well she isn't here to ask if she can come on in, crack a brewski and watch the Mariners / Angels game with him. _Everybody_ in La Push knows this; she has very gradually, over many months, rendered herself as transparent as air.

"He's out back. He's painting," he elaborates. The tinge of sourness in his tone is entirely lost on her.

Her eyebrows slowly pull together in confusion. "Painting?" she parrots, unable to mask the blatant disbelief that shows both on her face and in her voice. She grips an imaginary brush, does a graceful little mime-flourish with her wrist, "Like, _painting _painting?"

A bemused smile barely manages to conceal itself behind Billy's broad lips. He props one hand up on the arm of his chair and twists his torso to direct a pointed glance towards the rear of the house. "Yeah… boy's a regular Vincent Van Gogh..." she hears him mutter, almost too faintly to discern.

She curls her fingers around the edge of the door near her face and rests a cheek against her dusty knuckles.

Billy returns his attention to the entryway just as her eyes lose focus and slowly begin to drift downwards in feather-like swoops, side… to side… to side. Her distant gaze finally lands somewhere in the soil about ten feet beneath the house's foundation.

She tries desperately to picture it: Jacob… _Jacob _the towering teenage gear-head werewolf cradling a palette on one muscled forearm and staring all squinty-eyed and focused at a canvas, reaching up to retrieve a thin paintbrush from behind one ear and then determinedly dabbing the finishing touches onto a sweeping landscape… or a still-life…

It's enough to elicit a shoulder-rolling grunt of laughter from her.

She abandons her trance, eyes Billy incredulously.

"Painting…" she repeats yet again, this time without bothering to make it sound like a question.

"Yup," he answers nonetheless, "but I don't know if I should let you go back there."

Her whole head abruptly jerks back on her neck.

"Why?" The word comes out choppy, hastily crammed into the spaces between giggles.

_If you're worried about me teasing him senseless, maybe you SHOULDN'T let me go back there, _she muses inwardly, a partial smile still playing on her lips.

"Because he's being punished," Billy explains, "and I'm pretty sure that _your_ presence would effectively cancel that out."

"Oh," she murmurs, now thoroughly bewildered, allowing her vacant gaze to transfer to the chipped white flecks of paint barely clinging to the doorframe. Without thinking, she reaches up and picks off a loose flake with one slightly chewed fingernail, blushing and whipping her hand behind her back when she eventually realizes what she's doing. "Okay then, uh…"

She doesn't know what to say. She's always considered Billy's style of parenting a little bit lax, a little bit… different, even in comparison to Charlie and Renee.

But… _art_ as punishment? _This_ was new.

"Would you tell him I came by, at least?" The disappointment in her voice is as plain as the nose on her face. She's not used to being denied access to her best friend, not since the whole _I can't hang out with you anymore_ debacle. It leaves her feeling empty… leaves her _day_ feeling empty.

The left corner of Billy's mouth hitches up in a half-smile as he rolls his eyes. "Go on back. Don't say I never did anything nice for you," he jokes amiably.

The ensuing smile – the one that starts as a flash in her eyes and doesn't know where to stop – suddenly fills the old man with a powerful sense of fatherly pride, because he _knows_ only one thing makes her smile like this: His boy. His Jacob.

It doesn't take long for the sentiment to fizzle, however, as Billy reminds himself that this girl is also the essence of Jacob's tragic flaw, that her being with him constantly (even if, at times, only in his mind) is part of the reason why he's suffering out back in the first place.

But it's too late now to retract his permission. It feels criminal to even _think_ about it as he looks at her jubilant face.

"Thanks, Billy!" she gushes, releasing the door and virtually bouncing back down the porch steps, barely registering his voice as he shouts out one last request through the now-closed screen:

"You make sure that kid finishes his work! I don't want him thinking it's okay to get sidetracked…"

She chuckles and throws him a sloppy salute as she jogs across the lawn.

The space between the garage and the house is littered with Jacob's crap. Engine parts sit gleaming in the sun; a belt sander rests atop a partially stripped-down antique mahogany chest of drawers; tires are stacked almost as high as her head, baking in the heat and giving off a strong rubbery smell; a stack of plywood and an aluminum ladder lean idly against the wall…

She grins. Everything about _everything_ here reminds her of him. Not once in her entire before-life (the life she vaguely remembers having lived) would she have _dreamed _that a pile of smelly old tires would actually make her feel… _ecstatic_.

She clambers cautiously over the mess, and when she finally steps around the ladder, finally takes the corner and sees _him_, the little smile explodes and all but consumes her.

He's facing away from her, squatting underneath the kitchen window boxes, his beautiful, expansive bare back laid out almost as flat as a tabletop, his chest pressed into his knees. Beneath him is a crumpled drop cloth, and surrounding him are several cans of--

_Ohhhhh_… _painting,_ she thinks to herself, shaking her head, amused as always by her old habit of leaping to unfounded conclusions.

The muscles beneath his smooth dark skin undulate, harden and soften intermittently as he dabs away at the faded red siding with the thick brush wrapped up in his steady hand. His skin almost hypnotizes her, even from this distance.

Bella simply watches him for a moment. The dusty old FM radio from the garage sits a few feet from his knee, blaring out a slightly crackly 102.5 – their usual. Well… _his_ usual. _Seattle's ONLY classic rock station!_ She laughs to herself as he begins to sing tunelessly under his breath, bobbing his head along with the music:_ "I am just a new boy… stranger in this town… where are all the good times…"_

Just as she's about to clear her throat to get his attention she catches herself, stops short. He hasn't yet noticed her standing here, hasn't turned around or even so much as raised his head since her arrival in the backyard almost a minute ago. _So unlike him,_ she thinks,_ must be the music_. She hazily recalls a drizzly afternoon not so long ago, or maybe it was more than drizzly… Yes. Pouring. His keen ears had stirred him from _inside_ the house that day. A shiver runs down her neck at the memory of two solid, familiar arms enveloping her from behind… and she grins intriguingly.

The challenge is just too deliciously obvious to resist, and as she makes her way slowly, painfully, deliberately across the lawn she half expects him to swivel on his knees and face her with a cheeky smile… (_You think you're so sneaky Bells, but I always know you're coming). _This is why, when all of the careful tiptoes add up to result in her hovering merely two feet behind him, she can't help but feel slightly victorious, slightly smug.

She purses her lips as he re-dips the brush into the can beside him, still singing away, though he's now kicked it up an octave or two:

"_Take this rock n roll refugee… oooooh babe, set me free…"_

She's close enough to feel the heat radiating off of him, close enough to fill her lungs with his familiar scent.

…Close enough to touch…

She leans forward slightly at the waist, the pads of her fingers tingling, floating inches from his left shoulder blade as she silently draws air into her lungs, still reaching…

She joins in on the chorus just as her fingers touch down, "_Ooooooooooh--_"

"HOLYFUCKINGSHIT!" The words detonate like a bomb low in his chest. The brush somersaults and lands in the grass as a tiny wave of red sloshes over the lip of the can to coat the back of his hand. Every muscle in his entire body tenses under her brisk touch, and he springs to his feet faster than she's ever seen anyone move in her life.

On the way up, the back of his head connects loudly with the planter box. Soil and profanities fly everywhere.

She stumbles backwards a few steps, falls on her butt, slaps a palm to her mouth and doubles up, half amused, half terrified.

His disheveled, dirt-strewn hair hangs in his eyes, and he forgets about the paint on his hand for one second – the planter having pounded any pre-existing reason from his head – as he reaches up to sweep the strands away. When he finally sees her, his face is red for _two_ reasons.

"What the _HELL, _Bella…" He bends awkwardly at the waist, gasping like he's just completed an Ironman. His sticky, dripping fingers desperately claw the air at the back of his head, sadly incapable of relieving the still-throbbing pain. He knows it will only take it a minute to subside, two to disappear completely, but he still wishes he could at least touch it; at least pretend that _something _is more bruised than his ego.

She scrambles to her feet, both hands now covering her nose and mouth, convulsive laughter barely concealed behind them. She struggles hard to make her eyes exude apology.

But he's not even looking at her; his head is still lowered between his fists as they clench and unclench in a convincing show of agony.

Staggering forward, she allows her arms to descend from her face and wrap around his waist. She knows he can feel the laughter shaking through her, burning and scraping at the back of her throat as she tries to keep it in, "Sorry..." she gasps, and he can sense her lips moving against his bare chest, "I couldn't resist..."

"Mmmm… I'm sure it was _hilarious_." He doesn't hold back on the cynicism, bending awkwardly to press his cheek to her hair while holding his tainted hands loosely aloft like a criminal waiting to be read his rights. "Congratulations, Bells… you officially scared ten years off the end of my life, _and_ quite possibly gave me a concussion."

One of her hands fumbles its way up his chest, skates over the dip between his shoulder and neck, and gently weaves its fingers into his hair where they swirl blindly, searching for the non-existent goose egg. "Did it knock some sense into you at least?" she eventually blurts out, effectively killing the moment.

He scoffs and straightens up, jerking his head out of her reach, stepping back and pouting brazenly.

She glances up at him, trapping her bottom lip between her teeth to choke down a surfacing giggle, "Oh my God," the words edge their way out of the back of her throat, "your face…"

His eyes dart upwards, as if he'd actually be able to see the red paint on his own forehead.

Still slightly on edge, he flinches again as she bursts out suddenly: "OH!"

A small finger takes aim at his chest. "Sit!" she orders, placing her hands on his waist and guiding him backwards to the porch steps.

"You can't just go tossing dog commands at me when I'm in _human_ form," he protests playfully, complying regardless, now eyeing her on _her_ level as she roots through her canvas messenger bag.

She ignores him, pawing her way past crumpled grocery lists and months of old receipts. Finally, she pulls a small paper square out of the depths. He squints as she holds it up for him to inspect: an individually wrapped airplane sized antibacterial wet-wipe packet. "Ta-dah!" she sings.

The surfacing laughter almost completely obstructs his words, "Wow, Bells… you're going to make the _best _mom some day…"

She nearly vanishes behind a deep red blush. "I stole it from the restaurant last week," she murmurs, slightly embarrassed, "Thought it might come in handy for something…"

"You mean that chicken-wing place?" he asks, discreetly rerouting the subject.

'Yeah… with the skinny waitress…"

"Oh God, what an idiot…"

"And her…" She holds her hand impossibly high above her head.

"Hair?" he finishes, "Jesus." His smile suddenly broadens, "You were _so_ close to laughing out loud."

"Only because I kept looking at _you_…"

"I was being _good_! I didn't say a word!"

"You made the face."

"_What_ face!?"

"_The_ face… your little… smirky face."

"What!? I do _not_ have a--"

"You _do._"

"You're such a--"

"It's okay. It's cute… most of the time."

"Just not…"

"When it almost gets me in trouble…" she grumbles lightheartedly, the words dissipating into soft, nervous laughter.

He's making the face now and he wishes she'd look up, but she's fiddling with the packet, seemingly enthralled, ripping it open just to give her hands a task.

This is how their conversations always play out lately, as choppy, pointless, lightning-fast tennis-style rallies, indecipherable to most outsiders. It drives the pack crazy, and it gets him mocked ruthlessly when she's not around:

_Bella?_

_Yes Jake?_

_Remember when we..,?_

_With the thing…?_

_And that guy…?_

_And then you said--_

_And then we--_

_You're so funny and awesome, Jake._

_IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouBella. Let's make lots of babies…_

_Oh, I thought you'd never ask!_

_FUCK OFF, DICKWADS. _

He knows that his brothers' teasing really isn't that far off the mark, confessions and propositions aside, but that doesn't mean he thinks it's deserved; he and Bella's effortless exchanges, while sometimes a little cryptic, are always brief, gradually tapering off and dissolving into a silence that's more comfortable than sleep. This is where he's stuck now, staring dreamily at her lowered eyelids.

She finally looks up, absently hoping that the blush brought on by the mom comment is gone, and points her eyes keenly at the mark on his head. She scoots closer until she's standing astride his long legs and pushes the hair off his forehead with one hand, then begins scrubbing at the paint with the damp tissue pinched between her fingertips.

"So Billy tells me you're being punished…" Her softly moving lips, inches from his eyes, cause his knee to start shaking involuntarily, bumping gently against her leg as she persists with a smile, "What did you do to deserve _this_?"

"You don't wanna know," he states frankly.

"Aw, c'mon…" she taunts as she wipes up the last of the red from his brow, "fess up. What was it? Breaking and entering? Grand theft auto? Homicide?" She leans back and tilts his chin up with her thumb, assessing the situation, then, having deemed his head tolerably paint-free, trots over to where the large metal trashcan sits behind the garage.

When she turns around he's already back at the wall with the brush in his hand, meticulously picking bits of yellowed grass from the bristles with his too-large fingers.

"Nope," he clips, "worse."

"_Mass_ homicide?"

"A D-minus on my math final," he rotates his face to meet hers with wide, serious eyes.

She bares her teeth, inhales, "Yikes."

"I seriously think I came close to killing my father, though… so I guess it was _almost_ manslaughter."

"Good thing he's a tough guy…" she reasons as she jumps up to sit on the small, low back porch, allowing her legs to dangle as she faces him, observing his progress.

"Or _bad _thing… do you have any idea how _boring_ this is?" He lazily backhands the wall with the brush, "I mean, they say watching paint _dry_ is the worst, but I'd be willing to argue that its application comes in at _least_ a close second."

"Awww… Poor Jake…"

He doesn't buy her sympathy; her lip juts out too far to be considered genuine.

Nonetheless, he plays along, "Yeah, well it was either this or Guantanamo Bay… I _think_ I made the right decision."

"Definitely," she assures him with a nod, "the visitation hours here are _far_ more lenient."

He allows a reluctant smile to smooth the last hint of bitterness from his face. "Thank God, huh? Now that _you're_ here it's not that bad. Embry said he might come by later on to help, too," he finishes, slightly distracted by another blade of grass still clinging to the bristles.

She hops down, the soles of both sandals pounding the ground in perfect tandem, "I can help," she offers, palm extended.

He grins, glances up at her with embellished skepticism, "I dunno…" His scrunched-up eyes scrutinize her from head to toe, "I'd need to see a portfolio of some of your previous work… or at _least _a resume."

"Pffft…" she laughs abruptly as her pupils elevate to inspect a few stray clouds.

He taps his foot impatiently, laying it on in typical Jake form.

"Well, I don't have my resume _on _me…" she informs him, playing along with his little act, plodding forward leisurely and leaning against his arm shoulder-to-elbow as they both turn to face the wall in unison, "but art happens to be one of my best subjects."

_Bullshit_, her conscience nudges her, _there's an extremely warped blob of clay slightly resembling a vase at home that begs to differ with that statement…_

He props his elbow up on the crown of her head. "Okay then," he humors her, "tell me, Miss Artiste, what do you think of my work so far?"

She pauses for a moment, as if she's actually considering the question, then strides towards the house, one hand on her hip, the other stroking her chin meditatively. "I think…" she mumbles, angling her head dramatically to one side, "I think that this will _definitely _be remembered as the masterpiece of your Rose period."

The almost-giggles are nearly impossible to contain, but she somehow manages to continue, manages to maintain a tone of focused sobriety.

"The subtle nuance here…" her right hand, all five fingers splayed, raises to indicate the portion of wall next to the back door, "contrasts strikingly with the stark… boldness of the red here," she continues, exchanging right hand for left, kitchen wall for laundry room wall.

"But…" she barrels on before he can cut in, still unable to gauge his reaction with her back turned to him, "I'd say it_ definitely _needs more red over here."

Her focus shifts to the vast expanse of siding – massive in comparison to his completed portion – where the subtle gray of the weathered wood still peeks past the washed-out red.

She waits for his inevitable retort, but gets only unpleasant silence. An unexpected twinge of guilt tickles the walls of her stomach, and she's just about turn around and apologize for implying any laziness on his part when he finally pipes up:

"_Burnt Crimson._"

She slowly rotates to find him standing a few feet from where she'd left him, propped carelessly against the porch, jawbone hovering almost too confidently above his puffed-out chest.

Her eyes narrow to examine the disc-like object that he's attempting, rather indifferently, to spin on one finger. "Pardon me?" she laughs.

"_Burnt Crimson_," he repeats no less obnoxiously than before, pinching the paint can lid between his thumb and forefinger to halt its wobbly rotation and tapping its face with one ruddy finger, inadvertently transferring several patchy fingerprints onto the label, "Jeez, Bells. _This_ is _not_ just RED," he air-quotes one-handed, rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. "And _this_…" the same finger extends to indicate the trim surrounding the window, "is not just WHITE, it's…" he bends to retrieve a smaller can, raising it to within inches of his curiously tapered eyelids, "…_Powdered Snow._ And you call yourself an _artist_?"

The right side of her upper lip lifts into a defiant snarl, and she stomps violently towards the open can of paint - the one that had almost spilled over when she'd startled him. "Just give me the damn brush," she grumbles, stooping and whipping it from atop the can with a pendulum-swoop of her arm, all the while muttering under her breath,

"…burnt crimson, my ass… cheeky jerk… some people would just _accept_ the help…"

When she stands up again he's suddenly right in front of her, staring menacingly down his nose and swaying from foot to foot as if looking for a fight. "Hey, that one's mine," he growls with surprisingly little conviction considering his stature.

She snorts at his over-the-top theatrics, doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Do you want my help or not, Jake?"

"You can use the_ small_ one," His expression softens somewhat as he lowers his hand into a large paper bag near the wall, producing another brush, about one inch thick, probably destined for the application of P_owdered Snow_, she thinks.

"_YOU_ can use the small one," she tosses flippantly back at him. She boldly extends her spine to its fullest, holds her head aloft as if she's eight feet tall, capable of scoffing at his mere six-and-three-quarters

"But you're _smaller_," he blatantly reminds her.

"_So?_ I'm older."

"So? I'm stronger._"_

"What the hell does _that_ have to do with anything?"

And he smiles, a bit too evilly, she decides.

Considering the speed at which his arm moves, the fact that she's able to keep him from ripping the brush away on even the _first_ try is a flat-out miracle, but somehow she manages to evade his grasp not once, not twice, but three times, laughing and squealing at each futile attempt.

"You can't win, tiny woman!" he bellows as they circle each other like two predatory animals, raising his knee to jab her playfully in the gut. Her feet shuffle backwards as she awkwardly sticks her butt out, narrowly dodging the attacking joint.

When she straightens, her back collides with the porch.

A new smile – even _more _sinister than the original – lets her know that she's cornered. A ripple of mixed emotions flows through her in the one second it takes him to produce that smile, but she reacts impulsively before she even has a chance to seriously consider what any of them might mean.

The glossy bristles fan out over his breastbone - efficiently erasing his wicked smirk - and remain there for the length of time it takes the two of them to resume breathing… a million years, it seems. He reaches up and curls a massive hand around the entire brush, her fingers included, and squeezes lightly. Cool, viscous liquid seeps through the gaps between their fused knuckles.

The shapeless blob that remains on his chest is like a stab wound from a low-budget horror movie, like a Rorschach test for the dirty-minded. She stares at it in shock, which is strange, her absent brain reminds her, because she's the one who put it there.

She knows that he's watching her, surely enjoying this: her ogling the misshapen blotch on his skin. Further seconds pass, and she can't help but wonder what the hell kind of flawed instinct has caused her to react this way, to lash out at him with the only weapon readily at hand.

_He had me cornered… _she deludes herself_, If I hadn't distracted him he would've—_

_I would've— _

_We might've…_

She refuses to risk an upward glance while these thoughts pinball around inside her head. She just stares straight ahead. Then it all goes to hell.

A single drop, propelled equally by gravity and fate, looses itself from the middle of her hastily applied smear. It trails roughly over each pronounced abdominal muscle, rolling, dipping, slowly descending, gradually losing speed as it drags her eyes down, down, down.

When it finally bleeds into the waistband of his shorts – the same gravity-defying ones that the entire pack has turned into somewhat of a fashion statement these days – she loses herself for an instant, subconsciously allowing a sigh of out-and-out disappointment to escape her lips.

He's grinning like a fool, though she can't tell. He squeezes harder on the brush… on her hand.

"Got any more tissues in that bag of yours?"

Her eyes flick up, lock magnetically onto his.

"I'm…" she can barely speak, but it doesn't matter; the air between has finally, _finally_ reached its saturation point.

It's fitting that they both let go of the brush at the same time, but it surprises him when it's _her_ hand that finds _him_ first, clawing into his neck like a grappling hook, dragging him downwards with more strength than he'd have assumed her scrawny arms could manage.

Four more slowly-rolling drops of red, bleeding out from the tips of each of her fingers, work their way down his back, and she can feel the resultant shiver – the one that courses through his entire body – on her lips as she works them eagerly against his, coaxing him open with ease.

His own dripping fingers drift up towards her face. He fights against the need to pull her closer. This isn't close enough. Nothing is_ ever_ going to be close enough.

Just as the tips of his fingers transfer three little ruby dots onto her cheek, his brain kicks into gear and he hesitates, jerking away slightly, his forehead clunking awkwardly against hers as he mutters, "Damnit... sorry..." He exhales a quick laugh against the side of her nose.

"Nononononono...." she stutters desperately, leans across the chasm, breathes past his teeth, "_Shutup,__Don'tstop,Touchme_."

And immediately his hands are everywhere.

Hair becomes matted to their faces, stuck to their fingers, tangled and tainted with thick coats of red._ Everything_ is red. All she can feel is slick and fluid and warm, and all she can think is yes. Touch me.

The edge of the porch digs into her back as his hips shift forward, pushing against her. She plants her free hand down onto the wood behind her and does a couple of suggestive little hops. He quickly gets the hint, hoisting her up a bit too enthusiastically into a sitting position. Her slippery fingers briefly lose hold of his neck, and she flops back gracelessly onto her elbows before righting herself again, faster than the speed of light.

"Sorr--" he begins to apologize a second time, but she's having none of it. Their bodies fit together too well at this new level to waste time with apologies.

She locks her legs around his waist – it's easy now that she's sitting – and tightens them until her hips reunite with his. Their mouths struggle greedily, fusing with ardent necessity, parting only to facilitate breathing (that pesky little nuisance), and even then only for the briefest of agonizing moments.

She leans her shoulders further into him, smudging the still-glistening mark on his chest with _her_ chest, dragging parallel horizontal red lines across both of his broad shoulders with her fingertips. He stumbles backwards, his strong arms lowering to effortlessly support her weight, and they're suddenly teetering across the lawn, stumbling blindly on two large feet.

She grunts into his lips as her back slams up against a rather jagged wall. The back of her shirt sticks to the siding, even when her body lifts away an inch only to thump softly back onto the wood again, and again, and again.

"I'm...." she gasps in the millisecond her lips aren't obstructed by his.

_Thump… thump… thump..._

"What?" his voice is so deep it's bottomless, reverberating off the inner walls of her mouth.

"I..." and again she's unable to continue, because his tongue gets in the way. She moans into him, a tiny, breathy sound.

He releases her mouth from his in order to hitch her further up his hips, stumbling drunkenly a few steps to the side.

She buries her nose in the dip between his hairline and jawbone, simultaneously basking in and choking on the scent: Jacob Black and_ Burnt Crimson._ His hips dig repeatedly into hers, pressing her back harder against the wall, causing her eyes to reel back into their sockets behind closed lids.

"… I promised…" she breathes out with a shudder as his hot breath tickles the ridge of her collarbone, "…I wouldn't… let you get…_Ohhh…" _

He's slowed down the motion of his hips, increasing the pressure. The heel of his hand slides up her neck and along her jaw line, past her ear and back up into her sticky hair, tangling again, grasping anxiously.

"Let me get what?" She doesn't so much hear him as she _feels_ the noise's vibration in her bones.

"Side…" her breath catches, "...track--" the last bit gets lost somewhere behind his back molars.

It's impossible to even think about stopping, though she _knows_ how this must look; his back is almost too slippery to hold onto, and his own hands slide similarly across her face and neck. A battle rages inside her: instinct versus emotion; her inner neat-freak wants to run directly home and scour off every last cringe-worthy red smear, but the rest of her, the other 99.9%, can't _stand _the fact that so much of her skin is still so _white_, still untouched by his large, fumbling hands.

She moans into his mouth again as one of his wandering palms happens to find her left breast, pressing gently, gripping eagerly, the folds of her t-shirt gathering between his knuckles…

***CRASH!***

The sudden noise separates them, sends her shuddering down the siding. She lands in a graceless wall-squat not two feet from where Jake's aluminum ladder now lies angrily on the grass, its bottom few rungs still hidden around the corner of the house.

"FUCKING HELL!" a disembodied voice roars, followed by a painful, hissing intake of air.

They're scrambling, trying pointlessly to straighten themselves. Bella scissors her fingers frantically against each other, shaking her wrist to try and unglue several thick black hairs from her messy hands. Jacob's still-tousled head twitches back and forth as he scans the yard with a stunned, frantic look on his face.

When Embry finally rounds the corner, he's still on a rampage, rubbing his left elbow as if he's actually in pain, "I SWEAR TO GOD JAKE, IF YOU DON'T CLEAN UP THAT SHIT I'LL COME BY WITH MY TRUCK TONIGHT AND STEAL--"

It takes about a millisecond for a grin not unlike the Cheshire Cat's to illuminate his face.

"Hey, man" Jacob mumbles, not daring to look him in the eye. He lifts the paint can from the ground and places it on the porch (right next to a small red handprint that he doesn't even notice), walks in a purposeful circle, grabs the same can again, and returns it to the grass. Bella rounds her shoulders and tucks her chin into her neck, sweeping the large brush purposefully across a portion of wall that already has two shiny coats of red on it.

She closes her eyes for a moment, holding her breath and praying that somehow, _somehow _Embry will manage to miraculously construe this whole mess as something innocent.

Then she opens her eyes and sees Jake.

Her face scrunches up in horror. Another small handprint – a slightly skewed carbon-copy of the ones all over the porch, all over his face, neck, and chest, roughly smeared but recognizable enough – stains his lower abdomen, the last three delicate fingers disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts. She sneaks a glance at Embry. He hasn't missed it either.

She groans softly while Jacob stands paralyzed, silent.

"I'm just gonna…" Embry jerks his thumb back over his shoulder, "…yeah."

His grin somehow widens, though she doesn't know how this is possible. His eyebrows dart upwards as he slowly backs away, nodding. "Seems like you two are making out just fine on your own."

* * *

**Thanks again to Laura for taking the time out of your busy school schedule to beta this for me! (I didn't _know _that I was distracting her from schoolwork with fanfic until I was almost _finished_... stop looking at me like that!!!) Haha. Seriously, though. I always appreciate your input, girl! **

**So yeah. Lay it on me. This story was written on a whim, so I'd be interested to know your opinions. This is also the closest I've ever come (and probably ever WILL come) to writing NC-17 (I know, it's laughable to compare this to NC-17... but still...). It's an experiment for me on several levels, so please let me know what you think. **

**:D**

**Jo**


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